


Don't Take My Love Lightly

by anythingbutgrey



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, background harry/ginny sort of, ginny/agency otp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 11:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11988969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutgrey/pseuds/anythingbutgrey
Summary: Ginny does not want to name her children after the departed. She does not want to look at them and mourn.





	Don't Take My Love Lightly

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2011. Archiving here.

She has her own names for her children. She has lists of them, crumpled drafts of option after option. This is long before she and Harry get married, back when she still stumbles before referring to him as her boyfriend. It's a strange word to place on a man who already has so many titles.

Ginny thinks a lot about names. Ginevra, for example, comes from the Italian for Guinevere, King Arthur's wife, the betrayer of kingdoms. Her middle name comes from her mother. Ginny has never known what this makes her — betrayer or kind maternal heart. She does not feel like either. Names are important. She wants to choose the right ones for those who come after.

Harry has his names too. He whispers them when they lie in bed together, the curtains drawn in the middle of the night. He rests his head on her stomach and recites them to the ceiling while Ginny listens in. He has scores of them. Names of the dead. Ginny does not want to name her children after the departed. She does not want to look at them and mourn.

"I want to name the oldest after my father," he tells her with his eyes closed. Ginny ponders this. She supposed James is owed a name. The strangest thing about these conversations, far more than the names themselves, is the way he talks about their relationship, the way he is so invariably certain that they will marry, perhaps in the summer. She thinks sometimes that Harry forgets other people are not like him; other people fall in and out of love every day. Not Harry, though. The people he loved once he will love for the rest of his life. Ginny gets to carry that now. She wonders if Ron and Hermione ever feel smothered by it like she does sometimes, or if they are used to this by now, or, worst of all, feel the way Harry does. Ginny likes to think of herself as a woman who loves, who loves Harry, actually, but Harry talks about loyalty in terms of centuries. "We should live in the country," Harry says as he's falling asleep. "I have the gold for it. I can take care of you."

But people have been trying to take care of Ginny her entire life. She hasn't needed them before and she doesn't need them now. Harry is the one who needs taking care of. She has always known this, she thinks. Now she knows it even more, knows it from the way his body twists in his sleep, or the way Hermione keeps staring at him when his back is turned. "He needs you," Hermione once told Ginny. "You need to keep him safe."

No one ever talks about what Ginny has to sacrifice to do that. But in the end, despite everything, she loves him. She loves the mess of his hair before bed, she loves the spark in his eye when she pulls him back from wherever he goes in his silences, she loves him for his nightmares and for the things he can't talk about, she loves him because she can't explain it and in spite of her better judgment, she loves the way she can make him laugh, like that alone could save him. She loves him enough to keep the list of names tucked away, because Harry needs someone to love him and she can do that, she has that in her, she is sturdy enough to carry his heart in her hands.

But she does keep the list, and on the day James Sirius Potter comes screaming into the world she goes over that list in her head. They were good names, a strong list. Nathan and Jacob and Joshua and Peter. Names of God's chosen. Ginny thinks about what it means to be chosen by the chosen one. Ginny is too tired to think about that.

Neville visits her that afternoon in the maternity wing of St. Mungo's. He's in the hospital quite often; it's only a few years after the war and his parents are still alive, should she call it that. She owled him about the birth, of course, but she didn't have to. He would have been here in the morning anyway, to see his parents in their neighboring beds upstairs. She knows his schedules.

"How's mummy?" he asks as he steps into the room. Ginny had been feeding James, her dressing gown slipped down. Neville freezes, blushes, then turns away. For the rest of their lives, he will knock before entering a room she's in.

"We're good," Ginny says, covering herself up again. She coughs, and waits for Neville to slowly turn back around.

"And what's this little one's name?" Neville asks, eyeing the little blue knitted cap on James' head, a fresh gift from Ginny's mother.

"James," Ginny says, smiling at her child, staring up at her. "James Sirius Potter."

Neville chortles. Ginny looks back at him. His face is strange, and has been since he walked in the room. "I take it Harry chose the names then," he explains. Ginny curls James tighter in her arms. "Sorry," Neville covers, stuffing his hand into his pocket, and then, with a breath, his face relaxes into the person she's familiar with. She thought his pallor was about her breastfeeding, but she wonders now if it was something else. About the simple fact of Ginny Potter and the child in her arms. But now his expression has slipped back to the boy she grew up with, the boy turned man, the man who fought with her in the war and did not ask to protect her because they protected each other and those were the rules.

"He has his father's eyes," Neville says, stepping closer, one step, two steps at a time.

Ginny holds James forward, and lets Neville take the baby. Neville holds James in his hands, and James does not cry.

"Yes," Ginny says to no one, because Neville is no longer listening. "He does."


End file.
